First we hear a crackling sound, then a diffuse orange light glows in the darkness. A siren growing louder and the sound of a helicopter instantly mark the scene as a place of danger. There is a fire. First in the distance, a moment later everywhere. Trees and palms go up in flames. The fire’s power is immense. The firefighters and everyone else who is fighting the wildfires around Los Angeles act with remarkable calm. Nobody is running, the communication chain is working smoothly, TV reporters are broadcasting live, helpers are setting up emergency shelters, taking care of injured animals, cutting fire lines in front of neighbours’ homes. A tried-and-tested routine, efficiency and a great willingness to help. The crisis seems to bring out the best in the people. This uncommented observation is also a tribute to their commitment. But the longer it goes on, the more the question arises why solidarity and sustainable action seem to work in emergencies, while it seems impossible to tackle the crisis before it becomes an inferno. The film’s cinematic meditation on pyropolitics takes a look at our age of multiple crises. The permanent global fire management makes it easy to forget that behind those fires lie geopolitical causes that must be dealt with – not with water, but with political decisions.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

A queer auto-narrative about longing in three acts that addresses seemingly chaotic but systemically functioning cycles of attraction and revulsion, fear and desire, consumption and withdrawal, ecstasy and regret. While the film creates a timeless immediacy, the first-person narrator's commentary, in contrast, sounds like overthinking rather than an unquestioned moment of just-being-there. Whether at the club, by the lake or in the student cafeteria – one’s own judgement is always quicker than the question of how one is actually doing at that moment. But gradually something begins to change: An initially barely perceptible frequency shift sets in. The fragmented staccato of the first comments gradually gives way to a tale that gently settles in the interstices between dune, dream and reality.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Raúl Ruiz was part of the militant cinema movement that put itself in the service of the Chilean Popular Front, but remained an outsider. He employed experiment and irony to dissect social contradictions. In “Abastecimiento”, Ruiz addresses the supply problems under the Unidad Popular government, confronting the views of a woman from a bourgeois background with those of the socialist Minister for Economic Affairs. He follows this with a depiction of the activities of the Juntas de Abastecimiento y Precios (JAP), locally organised committees for the control and just distribution of food and everyday goods. The provocative juxtaposition paints a picture of an impossible dialogue. The film was banned at the time and was believed lost for ages. It was only recently rediscovered. Leipzig was not the place for the feature film director who emigrated to Paris after the military coup, but Ruiz was a frequent guest at the Berlinale Forum.

Florian Wüst

A public swimming pool complex in the middle of a forest which is soon to be renovated: between water slides, French fries, TikTok and sun cream, six teenagers spend the long summer days in the “Badi”, as outdoor pools are called in Swiss German. It is a place to discuss, laugh, try things out and simply hang out together. Whether on the grass, in the water or between the different pools, their conversations revolve around everything that currently moves them. This sun-kissed film accompanies these adolescents at a moment of transition. They talk about the past, think about the future and try to find out who they are and how they will find their place in a changing world. The film stays close to their glances, conversations and encounters, taking an unvarnished look into the inner world of these adolescents – their curiosities, their humour, their contradictions and their insecurities. For one summer long, the Badi becomes a place where childhood and future can exist alongside each other. And while the orange slide is dismantled, the question of what will remain of this summer bubbles up through the water.

Lina Dinkla

What is left when everything fades away? An old photographer tries to reconstruct people and events by means of old photographs, but they keep slipping away from him, vanishing in the dark, washed away by the waves. In his 2D animated film, rendered in black and white, Anton Dyakov not only shows how memories are lost, but also how they sometimes haunt and overwhelm us – for example in the shape of a disturbing archive fragment of blurred war photos. “Black Box” deals with loss and grief from a personal, yet universal perspective, while referencing the culture of remembrance in the digital age which is increasingly managing – or seeking to manage – without the haptic assurance of a printed photo.

Marie Ketzscher

Created using still and moving images sourced from NASA’s STEREO satellite solar observation mission, “Black Rain” turns unprocessed scientific data into a raw and glitched-out perspective on nearby interplanetary space. Embracing the artefacts, the film gives us an unmanicured and almost voyeuristic view of space, distant from the glamour of sci-fi or the carefully colourised images normally released by NASA to the press, as we track solar winds, coronal mass ejections and passing comets, sometimes recognisable only as blurs of lines and pixels, across a monochrome background of stars and the milky way.

Ben Sassen

Ugo Ulive left his native Uruguay in 1967 to move to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, where two years later he realised three short films at the newly founded Centro de Cine Documental de la Universidad de los Andes: “Caracas: dos o tres cosas”, “Diamantes” and “Basta!”. The latter was part of the Leipzig retrospective “Film in the People’s Struggle for Liberation: Latin America” in 1972. Inspired by Antonin Artaud’s concept of the “Theatre of Cruelty”, it stands out for disturbing images of an autopsy that reveal the degree of dehumanisation under the influence of imperialism. In “Caracas: dos o tres cosas”, also in the form of an experimental collage, Ulive, roaming the streets of Caracas with his camera, contrasts the public face of a divided society with audio fragments from radio, advertising and pop music.

Florian Wüst